Being an infant was boring as hell, so I was pretty excited when I found out that the trips to the smithy were a semi-regular occurrence. It wasn't that I preferred spending time with dad (aka Jaws, though the term had shifted from fearful to affectionate), but blacksmithing was something entirely new for me. It also helped that after that first time, mom never got upset about it again (at least, so far as I could tell).
My new parents may have been a bit strange looking from my perspective, but I felt strangely comfortable with our family dynamic as it developed. I wouldn’t exactly say that I had moved on from my previous life… it was more like the world (universe?) had moved on despite me, and I was just doing my best to adapt.
Jaws still got up early and came home late (and he was always happy when I saw him), whereas mom had either started a new part-time job, or resumed an old one. She was still always at home, but I was left alone in my crib a lot more often (which I actually appreciated quite a lot). I had been under the impression that mom was always a smiling happy person, but I started to realize that she was only like that when interacting with me (and sometimes dad).
I had made tangible progress with the strange book that the Celestial somehow stored in my mind, each time it randomly popped into my mind it seemed increasingly solid and real, as though it wasn't just the memory of a book cover, but the actual thing itself. I had a bizarre certainty that it was building toward something; or that it was gathering energy somehow like a computer that would turn on once its battery was charged.
The weird sensation that happened when I slept continued unchanged, although I was getting used to feeling amazing when I woke up. More recently I had begun having strange dreams left behind nothing by scattered fragments and impressions of a fractal pattern formed out of insanely complex geometric shapes... or, maybe, they were just random shapes that all babies dream of, and I was overthinking things again.
I also remembered to be more vocal with the baby sounds, but I was getting more and more impatient to learn the language. I was getting better and better at controlling my body as well, and my hands and arms were almost completely back under my control, and I could finally roll over from my back to my front... front to back was still a challenge, but that was more a matter of strength than coordination.
The sounds of our local language were becoming more familiar to me as well, and I was starting to pick up on commonly repeated sounds that came up in nearly every sentence I heard my parents say; likely the local equivalents of 'the' and 'a'. I was still pretty far from understanding what anything meant, but I was making progress. The individual syllables were getting easier to pick out, although I had identified a few worrying 'click-clackety-pop' noises in a few words that I wasn't sure a human from earth could even replicate...
But a least they didn’t have rolling 'r' sounds. I never could figure those out.
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“Abwoogoo?” I asked in fluent baby-speak while pointing at the kitchen table - which was sized so that Jaws could sit with us, and therefore came up to the center of mom's chest.
Mom smiled and gently rubbed my head, “Aspertoz cu emap or kroalex.”
I nodded sagely, gesturing for her to continue by waving my arm wildly in the general direction of the table. I had already picked up the connecting words of 'cu' and 'or', but I wasn’t sure how to use them yet. It was certainly nothing like English (or Chinese for that matter).
Mom reached up to pat the tabletop, “Emapp cu kroalex.” Then she reached down and touched the legs, “Emapi cu alex.”
I looked at her in surprise when she said 'alex' (which sounded like my name before I was reincarnated), causing her to let out a delighted laugh.
She stood up and said, “Qern kktpadenpro ad alex?”
The 'kktp' syllable was one of the weird ones that contained a kind of 'snappy-pop' thing that sounded so alien to me. It was like she had swallowed a speaker, and I was rather worried that I wouldn't be able to make those 'sounds' even after I learned the language.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Standing back a bit, mom pointed at her midsection, then upper thigh, “Aspertoz or ekro.”
She then bent down, pointing at her knee area. “Aspertoz cu alex perna ta or ealex.”
She then picked me up and kissed me on the forehead, “Kawe-rnot ba enkktpr Heller.”
After a careful analysis of her words, I had... absolutely no idea what any of that meant.
I was slowly starting to pick up more and more of the language, but without paper or a notepad (and, to be honest, lacking the coordination required to take notes in the first place…) things were harder than they might have been otherwise.
A knock on the door interrupted my study session, and I frowned as I realized that my chances of figuring out what 'alex' meant had just gone down the drain.
Occasional visitors had come to our house over the last few months, but most seemed to be related somehow to mom's part-time job (maybe picking something up or dropping something off), and none of them stayed for very long. I had a suspicion that mom wasn’t the most pleasant host unless she genuinely wanted you around, and she was usually in a sour mood for a few minutes after any visitors left, and a few times a week I would hear her yelling at someone.
It was hard for me to tell exactly what was going on, but often I would see her gritting her teeth or sneering after a knock at the door - which rapidly turned into a smile or a laugh when she noticed me looking at her. Sometimes she would come and pick me up afterward and talk a whole bunch in what felt like a conspiratorial manner, maybe complaining about the person who had just left, confiding in me, or just gossiping (I couldn't tell which).
The one exception to this was a 'pretty' young woman who had large, expressive, beautiful, freaky eyes (but was otherwise perfectly human-looking). When I first saw her I had a flashback to watching Anime in my old life, causing me to drop the little wooden horse I had been playing with (err, I mean, using to train my dexterity). And I say freaky because holy hell did they creep me out, and yet she was still somehow quite pretty.
It was a paradox that made me question if I even remembered Japanese art correctly.
Anyway, the big-eyeball lady was the only person mom was always happy to see, often picking me up and bringing me over to display (like a trophy?) as they both spoke in great lengths about something or other. I tried to listen in, of course, as I didn’t get the chance to hear actual adult-to-adult conversations very often.
After a few visits, I figured out that the Anime woman was pregnant, not that it really mattered to me. But, since she was one of mom's friends, I figured it was better to get used to her (and whatever mutated spawn she ended up producing).
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Shivering cascades of pain spread through my head in waves, bouncing from one side of my skull to the other. I was unable to control my body as my eyes fluttered open and closed rapidly, yet it wasn't the kind of pain that comes from a debilitating injury - instead, it was more like a deep tissue massage, or a leg cramp that was being stretched out... except... in my brain.
I could feel something changing; a passage opening in my mind with a mental 'ping!', then two, and then dozens, hundreds, all at once. At the center of it all was the Celestial's book floating serenely in my thoughts, finally opened and releasing calming streams of... something. I thought it might be a type of energy, but it also felt as though it was all happening in my imagination, and therefore could not have been real.
I had felt a sense of completeness when I woke up that morning, along with a vague sense of pressure in my head that almost felt good, somehow. As I tried to puzzle out what had changed, my thoughts went straight to the book, wondering if it was finally charged... which seemed like a safe bet, judging from the mind-expanding seizures that had directly followed me picturing the book again.
A tingly sensation like a mild, painless electric shock was flowing through my entire body. It was as though a current was cycling from my extremities, through my arms and legs, into my chest and abdomen, and then finally into my forehead. It was uncomfortable at first, but once I grew accustomed to the feeling it wasn't unpleasant.
I wondered if this was the energy of the universe - qi, chi, manna, or whatever - that the Celestial had talked about, back in the hallways of that strange liminal space Mark and I were sent to after our airplane got nuked.
The energy flow seemed to lessen after a while; I wasn't sure how long exactly, but I heard mom come to check on me a few times as I tried to figure out what was happening within my body. Deciding to be more vocal had been an accidental stroke of genius, as she had fallen into the habit of only feeding or changing me when I 'asked' for attention by inarticulately crying out for her in baby-speak. She would still pick me up at random times every now and then, but the sense of freedom I felt from having gained back even a little agency over my life was immense.